Georgian street

I made these textures for a street in the map today, they are going to be repeated so I tried to make a few buildings that were similar enough to have been built at the same time but not so dissimilar that a pattern will emerge in the repetition or that it is to obvious that the textures have been repeated down the street.

I made some adjustments to some textures today for Dan, adding in extra storeys so they fit the shape of the blocks in the map

Animation Scene

Today I divided up the scenes into equal portions so we could choose which one we wanted to do. They are all fairly equal apart from the first scene which involves slightly more work than the others as it includes a lot of rotoscoping and crowd animation. But the rest of us can help with that scene.

After having Ideas for the Tramp scene I decided to pick that one from the list. I think it will be challenging as it involves some complicated movements but I’m looking forward to it.

I also discussed the movement of the character on the forum we set up whilst I am away.
http://www.network54.com/Index/37382
some good ideas floating around but we need to disucss it all together - possibly over TS or on msn.

Group Meeting

After spending yesterday doing the 2D test, it was clear it wasn’t going to be Easy to animate the character in 2D. I was finding it extremely hard to draw in Photoshop without creating animation that would boil to badly. It would only be possible in reality to animate the character on paper and then scan in the images. We had a group meeting today to get everything sorted before Easter. We discussed animating the character on paper, we agreed that with the model looking so good, and the time constraints, we decided to try to refine the CG model an animate it in Maya – whilst hand drawing the face on top of the model. We then discussed where we were all at with our allocated jobs and then we decided to finish the animatic. With that all done we decided how to divide up the scenes for animation. Each person will choose one of the scenes and then dope up all the information and movement. We will then send this to nick so he can make the path for us for the path to follow. Then we shall animate the guy on top of the trike and bring it all together to composite and render. This way each of us can have control over the direction of the character in each scene, this will give us the freedom to direct for ourselves whilst still keeping to the general movement in the animatic. I’m happy with this as it will keep the animation fresh from scene to scene and not look like repeated animation. Also giving us a chance to all animate in the film that animating in 2D wouldn’t have.

Expressions

I asked to come up with some facial expressions and different angles for the character so I could do a 2D test for the animated character. He came up with these and find myself taking back what I previously said about the character and its design. It’s actually quite cute! I’m anxious to get some animation tests done before we start the animation process.

Today I managed to get everything done I had planned to before tomorrows meeting so we can sort everything out before I go home for Easter.

Here are two of the more important textures.... The bench for the final scene - rendered with a bump map and everything. And the drain from the "riviera" scene. Oh how I love these textures...

Render

This is a render of the shop scenes, with the squiggles on the pavement done in Photoshop, not the final effect. The z-depth was all done in camera in Maya. We are going to leave the sky grey as well; we feel it gives a nice atmosphere to the piece. I’m so excited by this, it looks amazing, and I can’t wait until we see some more renders of the town. Below is a de-saturated image of the render.

the last of the textures

Animation Ideas

We discussed the character getting on and off of the trike today. I sketched out some ideas after acting though it with Nick.

textures

Newest Texture

My Favourite texture so far

Final Concept

Heres the texture test I did, with the trike placed in by Matt and the character by Dan. Im extremely happy with this look - the trike looks great against the backgrounds - it just needs some pencil sketching over it to make it fit in a little better.

Shop 2

and another texture to add to the collection. Luckely Dan G is helping me with them now.

I modelled shop 4 and put it in situe of the first scene. So Dan could draw in the character so we could get an idea of what it would look like in the city...

Shop3

The latest in the textures

Character Design

Dan sent me this last night. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Part of me thinks it’s a repulsive cross between the ugly girl from Yan Svankmajer’s Little Otik, Otesánek himself and a dead zombie child. But another side of me that isn’t looking into his dead eyes thinks the Edwardian doll aspect of the character could work really well.
But regardless of that, we have decided to use this character in the film. I’m Happy to use it the only aspect that worries me is the fact a will have to look at this for the next month of my life :P
We also discussed how he will move and we thought it would be good if his little legs moved like pistons, driving the bike forwards rather than pedalling. This would be really nice and make it seem as though maybe the character is part of the bike. Also disused was how to animate the character – we still want to use 3D and 2D. After a talk with Jim we decided to animate the body in 3D and hand animate the face onto the body. We did toy with the idea of using replacement models in CG which I thought would be really interesting, but practically I don’t think w have the time to make this possible.

Shop 4, Marathon texture

Here is the first of the textures after deciding to create them in the same way as my Texture concept. It’s taking an extremely long time – I’m told I have to be less precious, but I can’t find it in myself – I will just have to speed up.

Trike

We came up with the idea today of putting the character on a trike. This not only helps reflect the circular narrative but it also helps bring our film away from the indie music video we found yesterday. I think the character on a trike would be really nice.

Uh Oh

http://www.imvf.com/2003/pilate.html

After seeing this today I was a little worried.
But in the end we decided it rubbish and in the end nothing really like our phone - just a little shocking to see.

We may change the design of the cahracter, but were not sure yet.

Reference Pictures

Today we went around Newport taking pictures of different buildings and walls so we could have a varied collection of houses and windows and doors etc to make the textures out of.